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9780156032490 Trade Paperback
015603249X
$13.00
288pages
Available
Trim Size:
5-5/16 x 8
Copyright Year:
2006
Territory:
US, C, O
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Read an Excerpt
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Synopsis |
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Jack Diaz arrives in Ivory Coast as yet another American relief worker in West Africa. But when religious tensions rise and Muslims and Christians square off for civil war, he quickly becomes something else: acolyte to the village witch doctor, agile polyglot, adopted son of the local chief, reckless maverick to his own aid organization. And most important to the Worodougou people of his village, he becomes Adama Toubabou: Whiteman.
Despite the mounting violence and the psychic isolation it brings, Jack refuses to leave his post, a Muslim village deep in the bush. With no funding and little contact with the outside world, he devotes himself to learning the cycles of life there—of hunting in the rain forest, cultivating the yam, navigating the nuances of the language; of witchcraft, storytelling, and chivalry. Longing for love in a place where his skin color excludes him, he courts Djamilla, the stunning Peul girl; meets Mariam, his neighbor’s wife, in the darkened forest when the moon is new; and desperately pursues Mazatou, the village flirt, all the while teaching his neighbors about the dangers of AIDS.
Alongside Mamadou, his village guardian, Jack learns that hate knows no color, that heroism waits for us where we least expect it. Brimming with dangerous passions, ubiquitous genies, spirited proverbs, and the pressures of life in a time of war, Whiteman is a harrowing tale of desire, isolation, humor, action, and fear.
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Praise |
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"[Whiteman] is a subtle but damning response to the assumption that Western aid is all-benevolent."
Entertainment Weekly,
"The book has a very real, immediate, nonfiction feel to it."
Los Angeles Times Book Review,
"It's the quality of vision that makes D'Souza's novel notable and, for a first book, unusual."
New York Times Book Review,
"Quirky, funny, and seductive... capture[s] a shard of the host country in a way that NGO novels rarely do."
Salon,
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Biography |
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TONY D’SOUZA’s fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Playboy, Black Warrior Review, the Literary Review, and Tin House. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and lives in Sarasota, Florida.
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General Subjects |
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Harvest Books
An imprint ofHarcourt Trade Publishers
A
Harcourt Education Company
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